Facebook Lead Ads: Do They Deliver?

Lead Generation Is Tough But Facebook Lead Ads Make It Manageable

For any business, large or small, the single biggest issue most have is converting potential leads into solid customers. The key, as it has always been, is information. The more you know about your customer / potential customer, the more likely it is you will be able to respond to their needs and change a tire kicker into a buyer.

Conversion is an ever evolving art form. Mobile users have a high click ratio but a lower conversion ratio than desktop users and the feeling among a lot of marketers is that you’re more likely to get people being happy about going for a root canal rather than filling out an online form.

What stops people from buying?

Over 50% of Canadians are using smartphones, a number that jumps to 80% when you’re talking about 18-34 year olds (source). They’re shopping, researching, learning, reading and doing just about everything on a mobile platform. One thing they’re not doing? Typing. Sure, they see your ad and they might even be interested but if they have to fill out a form to get the information they want and at the same time give you the contact details you want, they might just skip off and not convert. Mobile users need as few barriers as possible to engage. Ideally, this means minimal thumb typing.

Facebook Lead ads makes sign ups a snap for mobile users. If they’re interested in your ad, when they click the Call to Action button that you have selected and set up, they are asked for some information, but here’s the upside to Lead ads: Facebook pre-fills the fields from their profile. Result? Two taps and the user is done. Less input for the user means it’s more likely they’ll submit their info to you.

Staying in the Facebook network. With a standard website conversion ad, your call to action is sending the user to your signup form on your site. A site that may or may not be mobile optimized — Really? These days, you have to make sure it is! — but more importantly, that requires the user to leave the Facebook network, something that they might be reluctant to do, creating another major barrier that will prevent them from engaging / submitting forms.

Targeting and other Facebook candy. As with a standard Facebook ad, you are able to target the newsfeeds that receive your ad to the segment that matches your current marketing strategy. So while the user doesn’t have the benefit of ALL the background information that is available on your site – information that creates a much warmer lead – it’s still a strong lead generation option.

Privacy is still king. While the user’s information is pre-populated on the form, they still have to hit submit before it is transmitted to you, giving their permission.

A few ways to ensure that your Facebook Lead ads are effective:

Work hard on your sign up form. The more fields that can be pre-filled, the better so minimize your use of the custom fields. Facebook is good but they aren’t that good that they can guess what information you are hoping to see in those fields!

If you have a CRM, connect it to your leads. Facebook doesn’t integrate with all of them yet (Driftrock, Marketo, Maropost, Oracle Marketing Cloud, Sailthru, and Salesforce for the time being) so if you can’t connect directly or don’t have a CRM system, make a habit of downloading the available CSV file to get the lead information. If you wait too long to respond to leads, they’ll lose interest.

Offer value. Would you give away your contact information and expect nothing in return? Probably not. Don’t expect your leads to do it. Offer something of a value – something that is relevant to the leads you are looking for. Are you a gym? Offer a free month membership. Do you sell a product? Offer a free sample.

Do Facebook Lead ads deliver?

Some early testing by Digital Marketer was ambivalent – finding the cost to conversion ratio less compelling than what they got with a traditional website conversion. But those tests date back to the Lead ads early days; it would be interesting to see that test re-done today. In my mind, this is such an easy and intuitive feature that how could NOT convert? I’d be willing to wager my marketing dollars that Facebook’s lead ads will make things a lot easier for marketers and boost ROI.

The best time to get on LinkedIn was 2010, but does that mean 2019 is too late? It turns out that 2019 is shaping up to be a great time for lawyers to finally get active on LinkedIn, and for a few goo...